The minds at Disney have made some pretty questionable decisions over the years: in the 1930s, Walt Disney personally welcomed German filmmaker and Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl to Hollywood; the company has written notably Anglicized heroes into cartoons that set them up against natives of the Arabian desert; and Disney amusement parks demand that their employees keep beard lengths to a quarter of an inch while still allowing the heavily-bearded dwarves of Snow White to roam their parks at their leisure.

But on Jan. 23, things reached a new level of weird when it was reported that the company had imposed Mickey Mouse’s head over an appropriation of the same “waveform” album art used by Joy Division on Unknown Pleasures.

You have to wonder what the family-friendly company was thinking, considering that lead singer Ian Curtis committed suicide and that the band received plenty of flack in their time because their name referenced the prostitution wing of a Nazi concentration camp.

Is Disney crazy? Maybe. But maybe they’re not.

On the design, Joy Division bassist Peter Hook has offered that although he was “amazed they’re that hard up that they need to prey on little indie bands,” it could have been a tongue-in-cheek attempt to compliment the band. He also noted that, “From a legal point of view, the image is in the public domain, as Disney know.”

Hook is right. The image is in the public domain. The cover of Unknown Pleasures was designed by Factory Records art director Peter Saville. However, the wavy lines are from a stock image that resulted from the first-known radio pulsar captured in space in 1967.

The order page for the tee acknowledges the origin of the image by stating, “this Waves Mickey Mouse Tee incorporates Mickey’s image within the graphic of the pulse of a star. That’s appropriate given few stars have made bigger waves than Mickey!” However, it also mentions that the shirt was “Inspired by the iconic sleeve of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album.”

While Hook was right to say that the image is legally in the public domain, it is recognized by the public because Joy Division and its fans perpetuated it. If the band hadn’t initiated that process, few would get the reference in 2012.

Addressing another thing Hook said, with a marketing giant like Disney, it seems unlikely that it had compliment in mind when designing this shirt. Here, what he said about the company preying on indie bands was probably more accurate.

When I first saw the shirt, I couldn’t help but recognize the parallels between allegations that have pegged Walt Disney for a Nazi sympathist and critical response to Joy Division’s name. The dark imagery of Ian Curtis hanging from a noose made the shirt seem like one of Disney’s biggest marketing mistakes of all time, and for a brief moment, I wanted it. What makes this shirt design genius in an evil, capitalist way, is that at the same time Joy Division fans can be disgusted by the overt capitalism at work behind the synthesis, they can find it amusing in a funny, ironic way. In effect, Disney appeals to its fans as well as Joy Division’s, who might have been opposed as I was.

For the time being, however, both are out of luck. Two days after it was released, Disney has pulled the shirt from its shelves, ensuring its collector’s item status. Whether it will end up back on sale any time soon remains to be seen.

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